Steve. and all,I notice you can still fast drag-out and rotate bones even when the fast button is off?. I wondering, and would anyone agree, that when the fast button is off, it should revert back to the old method??Maybe not important usually, but when drawing out bones freehand, as in the new fast-select mode, its hard to get a perfectly straight line of bones. In some cases if this was an issue, you would think you could just turn fastmode off, draw your straight line of bones, then fastmode on again.? Might be nothing, maybe the new ability to draw and rotate bones at same time should be possible when fast is off. Personally, i think maybe not. Anyone else? And just a small thing re bone limits. Another use for being able to set limits, and a plug for being able to set limits, and then apply those limits to all or selected bones. Case in point: This strange thing is what it is. I like the angles, which are all 30degrees. So, knowing this angle is nice, i can limit the bones to 30 degrees each way. Then, when animating, you can just drag/rotate the bone till it stops, and you know you've got all exact 30 degree angles. One more small observation, and purely asthetic really. In the axis pic above, only the Z axis is enabled, yet x and y have visible green and blue arrows. Would it be a good idea to not have anything showing for those axis if they are not useable. ? Would be interested to hear if anyone has an opinion about that. I mean, its nothing really.....

To tag on to johnar's statement, I feel like the majority of applications have an option where you hold shift while rotating or moving and it'll snap- to a grid, to common angles (90, 45), to corresponding coordinates (x or y), etc

cooldude234: Editing the base properties of bones in the Scene editor (length, relationship to parent bone, etc.) could cause some problems if there are multiple Elements built from that Figure. But I don't see any technical reason that it can't be done, in fact should be fairly easy. I'll add it so you can give it a try.

Well I was referring to more the animation portion of it. Making the movement and rotation of bones animate(-able?) in the scene mode. So you could add key frames and reposition the bones for the next movement. This way you could tell how far you had positioned the bone in relevance to other things in the same scene (like another character).

For instance if you had animated someone high-fiveing another person you would want to know how far to position the arms so that they do not intersect nor miss. Thanks

Well you still cant just rotate the bones. You have to type numbers in arbitrarily guessing the distances and angles.

[/youtube]This video may help illustrate what I mean. As you can see the person is able to rotate and move the bones using the normal tools associated with that function but in the actual scene editor (instead of having to open up a properties dialogue and punching in numbers (in can be useful SOMETIMES)). There are other tools in Carrara and blender (and etc.) to help with such things like collision detection (in carrara I know you can switch that on and then when you move a bone it wont budge any further if it's rig goes through another solid object).

Absolutely. Although sequence mode is easier for animating at the moment, because you have things like key all bones, and key selected bones. But animating in Scene mode is defineately a happening thing. If you've had trouble rotating bones in scene mode, try adjusting/changing the view. If you've allowed bone movement in the fig editor, you'll get it moving in scene.

Well you still cant just rotate the bones. You have to type numbers in arbitrarily guessing the distances and angles.

? You can rotate bones in scene mode. LeftMB to rotate on X axis, MMB for Z and RMB for Y. Just click on the bone and drag...

WHAT!?!?!?!? This is a thing? Wait, I need to fact check, because I've always been in the dark about this always taking the long, grueling route of enabling bones and then typing in (and guessing) the angles.

Wow... I am truly a fool... Johnar, I wish someone had mentioned the LMB-MMB-RMB thing about 10 years ago, because that would have sped up my animation process by so much I guess I have NOW to begin to make use of it!